10: New Things
The Garner family is growing!
left to right: my uncle Bill, the ever so beautiful Gia, my mom, my second oldest brother Hayden and his fiancé Alyssa, my sister-in-law Kim and her husband, my oldest brother Garrett, my third oldest brother Trevor, and my dad.
Logan here.
How the heck are ya? It’s only been a month since my last post, but a lot has happened. Gia and I stayed up past midnight to ring in the new year together (!), and a week later, she experienced her first road trip with my family as we went up to Dallas to celebrate my brother getting engaged! Today, for another sweet surprise, I’m sitting next to Gia as I write this paragraph, occasionally looking out the window at patches of ice covering my backyard: the rare central Texas freeze. Thankfully, we have a fire burning in our fireplace and we have yet to lose power all weekend. The last couple days have been slow and restful. We’re only one full month in to 2026, but as you can tell, I’ve already experienced a lot of newness. For the first 2026 edition of Writer on Wheels, I want to share my hopes for the future and share my desire for a mindset fixed on the new things, not on the past.
In recent years, I’ve become a routine reader of the Verse of the Day on the YouVersion Bible app. (My dad and I spend a little time each morning reading and discussing whatever the verse is. One of us typically asks the other if he read it, and even if one of already has, we still read it together.) On January 1st, the Verse of the Day was actually two verses, Isaiah 43:18-19:
“Do not remember the past events,
pay no attention to things of old.
Look, I am about to do something new;
even now it is coming. Do you not see it?
Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert.”
I’m pretty sure they use this one every New Year’s Day, and why not? It’s about newness! For context, this passage is part of a subsection titled, in my version at least, “God’s Deliverance of Rebellious Israel.” The people have spent literal ages following their own selfishness, worshipping idols (in some cases doing really disgusting, evil practices to serve those idols), and ended up as captives in Babylon. Yet God speaks into the dire circumstance, remaining amazingly compassionate and faithful, giving them hope that freedom is coming from Him.
There are a couple of elements I’ll focus on from these two verses in Isaiah. Firstly, God just lays it out there from the start: Do not remember the past events, pay no attention to things of old. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m really good at worrying, particularly when it comes to worrying about personal failure. Even now, I’m worrying about if I’ll fail in my execution of this post. I spend lots of time and brain power dwelling on the sins of my past: impure, unhealthy and/or intrusive thoughts, resentments, interactions I could’ve worded far better, ways I didn’t value the people who are trying to love me. What I find over and over is that, even if I’ve brought the sin to God or reconciled with the person I’ve harmed, I dredge it up from the past. When I remember the old things, the sin multiplies: I try to take control (pride) of my own mind, giving the thoughts a chance to wander again. As I worry over how I can fix the screw-up or otherwise escape the memory, the shame flares up, and I fall (sometimes crash) into the fear from which God wants to free me. The past thus becomes a potential (perceived) threat to the good, new and exciting events of both the present and future. It robs me of my joy, peace, and confidence, stunting my spiritual and emotional growth and I doubt my identity as the disciple, boyfriend, son, brother and friend I’m being made into.
Recently, Gia shared with me a quote from author Tara Leigh Cobble that is rather timely for this post. She writes,
“Pride makes us forget God just as much as fear does. In a society that builds us up and tells us we deserve whatever we want, we’d do well to heed these warnings. Both kinds of wrong thinking, fear and pride, are rooted in forgetting God and fixing our eyes on ourselves or our enemies. We fight these lies by remembering who God is and what He has done.” (The Bible Recap)
This brings me to the second key element of the passage from Isaiah: God makes it imperative that we “look” at the new thing, implying a deliberate redirection. It’s easy for me to just take the idea of forgetting the past and run with it as an excuse to not take accountability, confess, own up to my sin and fight it. If it’s forgotten, what’s the matter? After all, God promises in verse 25 that He “sweeps away [my] transgressions for my own sake and remember your sins no more.” Yes, God’s grace is free and eternal in Christ, but receiving that gift is meant to be followed by accepting what it means for my life. Otherwise, what really changes? I have to trust that my ways and habits aren’t good for me or others and come under His authority, learn to adopt His will, to “look” at Him so I can “look” like Him.
Dear reader, I am still very much in progress. I still need to understand what it looks like to take these steps and be reminded of these truths. 2026 isn’t going to be without its share of learning and relearning daily, but He’s been so faithful, blessing me with “new things” that point to the newness He’s working in me. God is saying plainly, don’t dwell on those past things, don’t think you can fix the pain you’ve caused, but fix your eyes on Me. Wait for Me to heal and make you new.